Monday, December 12, 2011

Last week I showed you my son's Advent Calendar: paper stars with goodies sewn inside for him to open each day as we count down to Christmas.

I love looking at all of the stars all lined up and labelled with a countdown to Christmas, but I get just a little bit sad every time that he rips one of them open. So I decided to make some just for me and our tree.

I started off the same way, with a stack of stars of equal size, though they didn't match perfectly which I like. I also cut out a stack of the same size stars from an old Webster's Dictionary.

I threaded my sewing machine with red thread, set it to a straight stitch and the longest length. I stacked 2 brown paper stars on top of one another with the dictionary page star on top, and started sewing around the edges. Once I was 3/4 of the way around the star, I stuffed some polyfill stuffing inside to give the stars a bit of dimension.

I cut a 4 inch strip of red raffia, folded it in half, stuffed the ends in one of the open points of the star, and sewed them down.

I love these. The red thread on the dictionary paper is so fun and the back is still the red thread on brown paper, which I loved so much in the first place. Now the only question is, who won't be receiving a little bundle of these from me for Christmas?

Would you like a set of these stars? I also put some in my Etsy shop here.

I'm so glad to read this in the RSS feed a couple days ago. I've been trying to think of a cute (and inexpensive) advent calendar, and some activities to make the holidays shine. Your calendar is perfect! Simple, exciting, little! And I love the activity ideas.Where did you get the great Nativity set?